You're one of the largest manufacturers of bicycles and bicycle-related products in the known universe, with 1,200 employees, 1,700 dealers worldwide and hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. You find out that a two-person winery in Marin County has the same first name as your business. So what do you do?

Why, you sue, of course.

That's what the Trek Bicycle Corp. did to Andy and Liz Podshadley, the husband-and-wife owners of Trek Winery, who, the Wisconsin company said, infringed on its God-given right to the name.

Now, as you would rightly think, there are hundreds of registered trademarks or trademarks pending on the name "trek" including "Star Trek" (which we'll get to in a moment). Ah, but you see, one of the trademarks held by the bike corporation is for "Trek Travel," and, to follow its attorney's logic, "Trek Travel's most popular trip is through California Wine Country."

To which Trek Winery's lawyer, Will Pecauof Steptoe & Johnson LLP, acidly ripostes, "Bikes aren't wines. Anyone who can't tell the difference between the two doesn't need to be buying either one."

This week, federal Judge Barbara Crabbin Wisconsin threw out the case on jurisdictional grounds. Which means Trek Bicycles can refile if it so chooses, presumably in California. "I keep holding my breath that they don't, but at least it would be in our backyard, not theirs," said Andy Podshadley. Trek Bicycles attorney Amy Davison wouldn't say, but has said the firm "intends to aggressively defend its mark."

The prequel: Lawyers for CBS Studios Inc., which owns the "Star Trek" trademark, likely thought the same when they became aware of Trek Winery back in 2008. However, an amicable exchange of correspondence, including CBS' access to the winery's marketing materials, resulted in the lawyers telling the Podshadleys, in effect, to live long and prosper.

The couple's business in Novato has been working on that since the release of its first vintage in 2008. Although it produces little more than 2,000 cases annually, it has won a number of awards, including three from The Chronicle, for its '07 Syrah, Sangiovese and Cabernet. Business has been even better since news filtered down about its tangle with the bullies on bikes.

"It's funny, though," said Andy Podshadley. "So many people we meet at wine events give us the Vulcan sign. Nobody says anything about bikes."

Rights for the wrong: Nothing frivolous about the lawsuits being discussed this evening at Stanford University.

Prompted by the U.S. Supreme Court's counter-revolutionary ruling on campaign finance, five prominent legal scholars will be poring over the question, "Do corporations have constitutional rights?" Not only does it relate to the infamous Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case, but also what could be a rising tide of criminal prosecutions of Great Recession-tainted corporations, and increased government oversight of Wall Street and beyond.

Panelists include former U.S. Appeals Court Judge Michael McConnell, now director of Stanford's Constitutional Law Center, former law school Dean Kathleen Sullivan and former SEC commissioner Joseph Grundfest, whose area of expertise includes capital markets, corporate governance and securities litigation.

Easy for you to say: Jamie Dimon's comment that we have more to fear from California's debt than Greece's has certainly been bouncing around since JPMorgan Chase's boss made the comment more than a week ago. Actually, "Greece itself (is) not an issue for this company," he added.

Of course it isn't. JPMorgan has suffered no fallout from a situation it helped create in the birthplace of democracy.

For those who haven't been following, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs & Co. (naturally), and others helped Greece pile up unsustainable debts by employing various financial instruments enabling Greece to mask debts that otherwise would have contravened European Union limits.

The New York Timessaid the "tactics, akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America, worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermin(es) the euro."

As bad as California's situation is - Moody's current bond rating for the Golden State is the same as Kazakhstan's - there'd be even more to fear should JPMorgan be offering similar services here.